


Cold and Dark (This Is Not Home)

by triggerlil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asphyxiation, Creature Draco Malfoy, Curses, Dark Magic, Deep Sea, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Reverse Little Mermaid, Sad Ending, Underwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerlil/pseuds/triggerlil
Summary: Draco lives on the bottom of the ocean. Draco does not know what time it is, or who he is, but he thinks he is trying to go home. He knows, in the marrow of his bones, that home means lightning.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 26
Kudos: 97





	Cold and Dark (This Is Not Home)

The world was cold, dark, and wet. Draco clutched at his throat, opened his mouth, and tried to scream. Bubbles streamed out, white rings in the darkness, a torrent of silence. The world was black, frigid, and lonely. He wondered when the last time he’d seen sunlight was, the last time he’d spoken, heard his own voice. Glancing down at his hands, they were paperwhite, thin blue veins tracing back and forth across his skin. He clamped down on the side of his neck, the flesh of his gills barely reaching through his numbness. He looked up—blackness. He looked down—blackness. He looked to his left, and his right; the world was void of colour, of warmth, of comfort of any kind. He breathed in, feeling the water rush unnervingly through his gills. He breathed out, feeling the silence settle around him like a warning.

Draco moved forward tentatively, kicking out his legs. They felt like dead weights, and the longer he tried to swim, the worse it became. He pushed the water around him, but he could barely tell if he was moving, each particle of space the same as the last; black, cold, flecked with minerals and flesh. Slowly he began to sink. He gave up kicking, or using his webbed hands; he drifted down, farther and farther. It made no difference; really, he couldn't remember why he was here, or what he was supposed to be doing. His long blond hair circled his neck, like spider silk across his arms.

Vaguely, he pictured speckling green gems in the distance, strikes of lightning crashing through the water, breaking apart the darkness. He didn’t know what the images meant, but they sent a spike of longing through his chest, and he felt as if he would die from the yearning.

As he fell through the water, he began to sink into his own negative emotions, feeding on them—memories that didn’t strike him as his own, thoughts he couldn’t understand, and always this stretching blackness. Occasionally, he would intercept a beast, something with large ogling eyes, and a body the length of a colossus. They didn’t bother him, although they occasionally asked him where he was going in deep, rumbling voices that echoed towards him through the waves. He didn’t know how to reply and, eventually, they left.

When he finally reached the bottom, the sand felt like heaven, and he had forgotten how to walk. He crawled forward across rocks, let crabs with legs like spiders cross his path, sat as volcanoes erupted across the floor, and slowly regained his mobility.

He walked across the planes; he didn't know how long. He never ate. He never slept. He just walked, the dark water fanning out behind him, his travelling cloak, the grit and sand coating his feet, dragon-hide boots, webbed hands blue from cold, leather gloves, and hair always growing, flowing now past his waist. White scarf? Wedding veil? He didn't know what the words meant that flitted across his brain. All he knew was that he was trying to go somewhere; he was trying to go home. Because this was not home. Home was not the bottom of the ocean, frilled sharks and darker trenches, dead algae and whale bones. Home was emerald green, white, flower, sun, something magic, and lightning. Lightning strikes that crashed over the earth in waves, that spoke in a language only Draco could understand, whispering in his ear, the crack of thunder, forks of light, a love language of its own.

Draco kept moving forward for the lightning, for the hope of seeing it again.

And one day, he stepped forward, and it wasn’t dark. There was a brief amount of sunlight filtering through the water. A tiny fish, sparkling silver, flitted past his cheek, bumping into his nose. He stared at it in wonder, tears leaking out of his eyes, floating upwards. He began to swim.

He kicked forward, swimming harder and faster; he swam through coral reefs and volcanoes, tropical fish and beds of kelp. The world was warm; the ocean was bright. It felt a bit more like home—flashes of green, and coral structures that looked like lightning. But it wasn't right; it wasn't close enough. He kept swimming, towards whatever it was that ate at him, told him to keep pushing forward.

One day, he was floating with the current towards some rocks, and he recognized them. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew these were his rocks, that he had seen these rocks before. He looked up, and the surface was closer than he had ever seen. Sunlight filtering down, highlighting the coast, the white sand beneath his webbed toes.

He swam forward more eagerly. He recognized this shoreline, and when his head breached the surface, his hair floating around him like sea foam, he knew the white house up the road. It had vines crawling up the side, lavender growing in the front garden, and Draco wasn’t sure how he knew what those things were, but he did. He knew this place, knew these beaches, these cliffs, that cave, knew that the window on the upper right was his room—no, it was their room. He stayed low over the water, his gills aching for air, and then he saw him on the beach.

He had tanned skin, wild black hair; and as Draco slowly fluttered towards him, the man noticed him. He paused for a moment, a mutual staring, and then the man was running forward. He was old, older than Draco, though he didn't know how old he was. The man fell forward on the beach, watching Draco swim forward, knees in the sand.

When Draco had gone as far as possible while keeping his neck in the water, and the man realized he wasn’t going to come further, he began wading into the ocean.

Soon, the man was standing in front of him, and Draco knew that this was what he had been yearning for. Streaked across his face, etched around his bright, green eyes, was a messy bolt of forked lightning; a scar. Draco reached out, and let a web hand trail over it, the man leaning into Draco’s spongy flesh. Lightning meant love, lightning that shook Draco to the core, that had flayed him open and stitched him back together. 

“Draco?” The man croaked out, his voice trembling, and Draco nodded.

“H—,” he tried. He had not spoken in decades, he now knew. He had been floating, aimless, below the water, for thirty years. And now he was home. 

“H—,” he tried again. Harry bundled him into his arms, clutching at his bare back. He was so warm, is what Draco thought, Harry’s skin was on fire, and it felt beautiful.

“You went missing, Draco,” Harry sobbed into his hair, “you were gone for over thirty years, we arrested the man who had cursed you, but we could never find you. You were declared dead, I thought you were—” he let out a shaky breath, “I thought I would never see you again.”

“Ha—,” Draco croaked, “Har—ry…”

Memories flooded back, and he cried out, his body wracked with the wait of it.

_He was thirty, living with the love of his life at their seaside home, he was happy. For once, for once, he was happy._

_Harry was a wand maker, a beach scavenger, a wanderer. He worked spells into the sand, building magic out of the seaside, shells and sea glass. Draco was a potions master, a researcher, a seaside swimmer, brewing elixirs made of rare scales and seaweed only found in these waters._

_Harry knew just how he liked his tea; a generous spoon of sugar, no milk. The opposite to Harry, but they liked their drinks the same; a glass of wine in the evenings on Friday, a gin and tonic in the afternoon on Saturday. They read books on their front porch; Draco wouldn’t tell anyone else, but he loved a good romance novel. Harry read about Quidditch, wand making, and the occasional murder mystery. They watched science fiction movies, would race each other to the beach, swim laps, sunbathe, and then in the trembling hours of dusk, would shower together, washing each other’s hair, running their hands over each other’s bodies, memorizing beauty marks, scars, muscles, movement._

_And then one night, while walking alone by the water, he felt a spell hit his back from behind. He tried to cry out, but his voice was gone, and he felt his body begin to change. He wanted to scream at the excruciating pain that was flaring at his neck, but he just sat there shaking, sweat trickling into his eyes._

_“Filthy scum,” someone hissed behind him, and then a bag was thrown over his head, and he felt himself dragged onto a hard surface, and then the roaring of a boat’s engine. He couldn’t breathe, he clawed at his neck; but no matter how much he opened his mouth and sucked in air, it wasn’t enough. He scrabbled at the sack over his head, feeling his lungs constricting, and then… and then he was toppling into the water, and everything was dark._

“Harry,” Draco cried, “Harry.”

He couldn't seem to form any other word, but he knew that name, knew the syllables of that name by heart, knew the feeling of his tongue against the sides of his teeth. Harry, Harry, Harry.

Draco began to push Harry backwards, so that they were in the open air, his neck uncovered by the water. Harry didn't seem to care, let himself stumble back, until Draco was lying on top of him in the sand, whole weight pressing down, and he wrapped his arms around his love.

“Harry,” he cried, “Harry,” as his lungs constricted.

“Draco,” Harry finally said, reaching up to Draco’s gills, “are you alright, can you breathe?”

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, but he needed this. He needed this.

“Harry, Harry, Harry.”

“Draco, we need to get you back into the water.”

Draco shook his head, no. He didn’t want to go. He never wanted to be in the water again.

"You're going to die," Harry moaned, trying to wrestle Draco back into the water. Finally, Draco sat up, his lungs beginning to ache, and placed a webbed hand on Harry's face. It had to be this way, he thought, I will never go back to normal, he thought. Harry was sixty-something years old; Draco was thirty. One of them was going to have to watch the other die, and Harry had already come to terms with Draco’s death long ago. He knew in the marrow of his bones that this was what he had to do, that this spell was most likely irreversible, that by the time he had learned how to walk on land, to speak, to do magic, Harry would be dead. That there was a chance, he had no magic left in him, regardless.

He pleaded with his eyes, and Harry understood. He kissed Draco desperately, with a searing passion, parting Draco’s cold, wet lips, and flitting their tongues together. Draco’s chest started to constrict, expanding and contracting sporadically as it gasped for air, and Harry held Draco closer, held down his spasming body, and they kissed, and kissed, and kissed. Trying to get in every single one they had missed, every bit of intimacy that had been taken from them. Draco gasped, his body searing, and reached desperately for the water, but Harry held him, and cried, and cried, and cried. Until Draco fell limply against Harry, his vision tunnelling, and imagined, hopelessly, that he was just exhausted, that Harry was going to pick up his sleeping form, and carry him into their home. Harry would set him down on their couch, drape a blanket over him, and make them a spot of tea. Then they would watch the telly, as Draco stroked his hands through Harry’s hair. He was just very, very, tired, he thought. And so in Harry’s shaking arms, he slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Maca, Jack, and Amy for the betas! This idea came to me when I was having a really rough time, and I just kind of channelled all my sadness and feelings into it. If you enjoyed, consider leaving a comment or kudos. 🖤


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